This invention relates to the technical field of laminated films and related articles of manufacture, such as bags and containers, particularly for ostomy.
More specifically, the invention concerns flexible polymeric air cushion films (air cushion film is colloquially referred to as "bubble cap" or "bubblepak"), which lend themselves specially well to the manufacture of containers and bags intended for human drainage in medical applications, and particularly for collecting excretion products from patients whose excretive apparatus has been reconstructed surgically.
Easily pictured, and readily ascertainable, is the discomfort suffered by patients who, after undergoing surgical intervention to reconstruct or deviate their excretive apparatus following traumatic or pathological events in particular of the tumoral type, then must carry along a personal plastic container of excretion products continuously during their active life.
In general, such patients find themselves with an artificial anus formed from a protruding intestinal portion connected to a collecting plastic container which is carried at the waist region against the skin, under the patient's garments.
There exist a few features that a patient of the kind in question would welcome of such a container, the presence of which container should desirably pass unnoticed by other persons met in the course of the patient's activities.
Currently available from a number of manufacturers are excretion product collection containers which meet some of the requirements set forth by deviated excretion apparatus patients; these containers, which are formed generally from plastic film materials, exhibit features which could be regarded as reasonably satisfactory for the using patient; among these, mechanical properties may be mentioned which afford a good degree of protection against wear, abrasion, and puncturing, as well as gas and odor barrier properties. Prior ostomy bags are disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,687,711 and U.S. Pat. No. 4,826,493.
However, and beyond the results achieved thus far, there still exists the need for comfort.
The containers employed in the past exhibit a texture and "feel" which make them less than ideally suited to applications involving compatibility with human skin, whereby the patient is never allowed at least occasionally "to forget" his/her disabled condition, with obvious disturbing consequences of a psychological nature. The plastic is lying up against the skin. The skin sweats. The plastic sticks and rubs. The result goes from annoying, to irritation, to rash, particularly during hot humid summer months.